About eating exercise calories back

Aèlis18118360
Aèlis18118360 Posts: 19
edited December 17 in Health and Weight Loss
I know there are already many threads about this topic, but I haven’t found this particular question anywhere.

I recently upped my calories, by eating my exercise calories back, in order to have a 1400 net, but I was thinking…

Doing cardio for an hour I burn about 400 calories.

Doing nothing for an hour I burn about 80 calories.

So, if I want to eat my exercise calories back I should not consider 400 calories, but 400 – 80. That means 320.

Please, tell me what you think.

Replies

  • Aèlis18118360
    Aèlis18118360 Posts: 19
    No one?

    (sorry, but I would really like to hear other opinions)
  • jg627
    jg627 Posts: 1,221 Member
    I did this for a while, but didn't like it. I also got some advice from fitness expert, Steve Turano. This is actually bad. You're going to have a hard time nailing down your TDEE doing this. I'm going back to eating a flat rate every day. It gave me serious gas every day because you are basically changing your diet every single day. If you can stand the smell and don't care about an accurate TDEE, then go for it.
  • jg627
    jg627 Posts: 1,221 Member
    Know roughly how much you exercise in a week and eat accordingly about the same amount each day if you want to go the flat rate amount. If you have a sedentary job, but go to the gym 3-4 days a week, then try setting to lightly active maybe moderately active if that's too low.
  • ElizabethRoad
    ElizabethRoad Posts: 5,138 Member
    I did this for a while, but didn't like it. I also got some advice from fitness expert, Steve Turano. This is actually bad. You're going to have a hard time nailing down your TDEE doing this. I'm going back to eating a flat rate every day. It gave me serious gas every day because you are basically changing your diet every single day. If you can stand the smell and don't care about an accurate TDEE, then go for it.
    How does eating a different amount every day give you gas?
  • jg627
    jg627 Posts: 1,221 Member
    I did this for a while, but didn't like it. I also got some advice from fitness expert, Steve Turano. This is actually bad. You're going to have a hard time nailing down your TDEE doing this. I'm going back to eating a flat rate every day. It gave me serious gas every day because you are basically changing your diet every single day. If you can stand the smell and don't care about an accurate TDEE, then go for it.
    How does eating a different amount every day give you gas?
    Your colon tries to adapt to your diet. What your digestive track doesn't digest on its own, the bacteria in your colon does. The byproduct of that is gas. Same thing with fiber. The bacteria breaks down the fiber that you can't digest.
  • kennethmgreen
    kennethmgreen Posts: 1,759 Member
    I know there are already many threads about this topic, but I haven’t found this particular question anywhere.

    I recently upped my calories, by eating my exercise calories back, in order to have a 1400 net, but I was thinking…

    Doing cardio for an hour I burn about 400 calories.

    Doing nothing for an hour I burn about 80 calories.

    So, if I want to eat my exercise calories back I should not consider 400 calories, but 400 – 80. That means 320.

    Please, tell me what you think.
    I can understand your logic, but to me it's chasing details that don't matter. There is no way to get a 100% accurate calorie count (going in or out) unless you are in a lab. You can get pretty good estimates, but if you are living life in the outside world, it's always going to be estimates. Even the best heart rate monitor in the world is only giving you an estimated calorie burn. It's just better/more accurate than the cheaper ones.

    While it's true that most reported calorie burns are gross calorie burns (as opposed to net cals burned), this usually won't make much difference unless you are reporting an activity that lasts longer than two hours. I'm no expert, and there are people on here smarter than me that can expand on this, but I haven't seen any evidence to the contrary.

    Think about this: you don't log the calories burned walking to your car from your desk do you? What about going up the stairs during the day? There are lots of little activities that may not be big calorie burns, but are certainly more than a resting rate calorie burn. Considering those, I figure things pretty much equal out and entering gross calorie burns is OK.

    I know that when I am worrying about calories differences of less than 100 in day (even 200), I'm probably obsessing a bit. That's me. The best way to know for sure is time. Track everything carefully and see what happens over the course of 2-3 weeks. Are you losing weight as expected? Are you losing at roughly the rate you should, according to your MFP calorie deficit? If not, adjust from there.
  • lisakyle_11
    lisakyle_11 Posts: 420 Member
    yep... your logic makes sense. it's all an estimate though.
  • ElizabethRoad
    ElizabethRoad Posts: 5,138 Member
    I did this for a while, but didn't like it. I also got some advice from fitness expert, Steve Turano. This is actually bad. You're going to have a hard time nailing down your TDEE doing this. I'm going back to eating a flat rate every day. It gave me serious gas every day because you are basically changing your diet every single day. If you can stand the smell and don't care about an accurate TDEE, then go for it.
    How does eating a different amount every day give you gas?
    Your colon tries to adapt to your diet. What your digestive track doesn't digest on its own, the bacteria in your colon does. The byproduct of that is gas. Same thing with fiber. The bacteria breaks down the fiber that you can't digest.
    OK whatever... Do you think that the natural human condition is to eat the exact same foods in the exact same amounts every day?
  • jg627
    jg627 Posts: 1,221 Member
    I did this for a while, but didn't like it. I also got some advice from fitness expert, Steve Turano. This is actually bad. You're going to have a hard time nailing down your TDEE doing this. I'm going back to eating a flat rate every day. It gave me serious gas every day because you are basically changing your diet every single day. If you can stand the smell and don't care about an accurate TDEE, then go for it.
    How does eating a different amount every day give you gas?
    Your colon tries to adapt to your diet. What your digestive track doesn't digest on its own, the bacteria in your colon does. The byproduct of that is gas. Same thing with fiber. The bacteria breaks down the fiber that you can't digest.
    OK whatever... Do you think that the natural human condition is to eat the exact same foods in the exact same amounts every
    day?
    Nobody said you have to become a robot.
  • sugarnspicere
    sugarnspicere Posts: 45 Member
    I heard that you never want to eat back the calories you burned durring a fitness activity. I don't really understand the point of it at all myself. IT seems counter productive.
  • jg627
    jg627 Posts: 1,221 Member
    I did this for a while, but didn't like it. I also got some advice from fitness expert, Steve Turano. This is actually bad. You're going to have a hard time nailing down your TDEE doing this. I'm going back to eating a flat rate every day. It gave me serious gas every day because you are basically changing your diet every single day. If you can stand the smell and don't care about an accurate TDEE, then go for it.
    How does eating a different amount every day give you gas?
    Your colon tries to adapt to your diet. What your digestive track doesn't digest on its own, the bacteria in your colon does. The byproduct of that is gas. Same thing with fiber. The bacteria breaks down the fiber that you can't digest.
    OK whatever... Do you think that the natural human condition is to eat the exact same foods in the exact same amounts every day?

    Read this. I switched to my computer now. It's hard to post links with my phone.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_brain
  • mommy4joey
    mommy4joey Posts: 21
    i try not to eat my excercise calories back completely. I burn on an average 1000-1500 calories a day extra with my cardio workouts. There are days when it tells me I can eat 3600 calories because of my work outs. I usually try and leave an extra 1000 calories not eaten. I actually maintain my weight this way. If I am a pound or two ove what I like to maintain, I may even leave less calories eaten. I was always told, if you want to lose weight, you need to take in less calories than you burn. WIthout being unhealthy of course. Means if you start off with 1400 calories for the day and you burn 600 calories doing a work out, you dont want to eat 2000 calories. Maybe eat 1600-1700 calories. Its always worked for me.
  • kappyblu
    kappyblu Posts: 654 Member
    Those 80 calories you burn an hour are already taken into consideration by MFP. You are going to burn those no matter what. Do not add them into exercise calories. So, eat back your 400 exercise calories or what a lot of people eat back is a percentage of them. Start with 50% of them and see how it goes. Good luck!! :flowerforyou:
  • jaimemariel
    jaimemariel Posts: 183 Member
    I agree with you on this one. Thats why I only record 1/2 of my exersize so that I only eat 1/2 of my total exersize calories back. When I run for 1/2 hour and burn 200 calories, I'm not burning 200 in addition to the 100 I may be burning if I was doing nothing. I'm burning 200 total for that 1/2 hour, so yeah, I record and eat 1/2 of that. Its been working for me.
  • CristlNothem
    CristlNothem Posts: 54 Member
    i have never eaten back my calories. like others have said, it just seems counter productive to me. when i work out it is usually only burning like 400 calories though, so i still usually end up with 1200 calories at the end of the day (food-calories burned) I guess everyone will have different opinions on this though. that is the way i did it and it helped me to lose a good amount of weight. just need to get back to that :)
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